Baidu Surges: What Wall Street's Saying

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Baidu (BIDU) shares surged after the Chinese Internet search giant reported fourth-quarter results that blew past expectations, and noted that 2014 would be a year of big investment, as the company competes for the lucrative Chinese Internet market.

For the fourth quarter, Baidu earned $459.9 million in net income, earning $1.39 per share on a non-GAAP basis, as revenue exploded to $1.573 billion, up 50.3% year-over-year.

"We're pleased to have finished a milestone year for Baidu with a solid fourth quarter performance," said Robin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu in the press release. "2013 was marked by our entry into new areas and significant progress in mobile, as we invested aggressively to build out Baidu's position in search, app distribution, and location-based services. Our efforts to drive mobile adoption among customers gained significant traction throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, mobile accounted for over 20% of total revenues."

Though Li was pleased with the results, he noted that Baidu is going to look for acquisitions in 2014, as the company continues to expand into mobile search, and compete with other Chinese Internet giants, including Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group, which is partially owned by Yahoo! (YHOO).

Shares of Baidu were higher in early Thursday trading, gaining 3.5% to $179.00 following the results.

For the first quarter, Baidu said it expects revenue will be between $1.526 billion and $1.573 billion, largely in line with Wall Street consensus. Following the quarter, analysts on Wall Street were largely positive, though some warranted caution, as 2014 proves to be a year of heavy investment. Here's what a few of them had to say.